‘Brain drain' wanes

Sunday

Jan 31, 2010 at 6:00 AMJan 31, 2010 at 3:16 PM

By Drew FitzGerald SPECIAL TO THE TELEGRAM & GAZETTE

Could the threat of a “brain drain” have been all in our heads?

Throughout the past decade, study groups and Massachusetts business leaders have warned that the state with the highest rate of college education was losing talent too fast to stay economically competitive.

Population statistics seemed to back up these warnings. The state's work force was aging. More people were leaving Massachusetts than moving to it. The education level was growing, but at a slower rate each year.

Yet recent data suggest the state's pool of young talent is far from evaporating — in fact, it is bigger than ever.

“It's sort of a positive message because a lot of the discussion before … was why are people leaving, and what's making them move away?” said Heather Brome, a senior policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's New England Public Policy Center. Instead, policy makers “should be thinking broadly about how to expand the skilled labor pool.”

Like much of the rest of the country, Massachusetts is still aging as the baby boomer generation retires and fewer young people take their parents' places, Ms. Brome said. Between 1990 and 2007, the population in Massachusetts of young adults — 25- to 39-year-olds — shrunk by 19.4 percent to 1.28 million.

But other demographic changes and initiatives during the past decade have worked in the state's favor. The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that in 2008, about 4,000 more people moved into Massachusetts from other states than left it, reversing a trend that had persisted for two decades.

At the same time, the state attracted about 25,000 immigrants and had a natural gain of 22,000, for a total population increase of about 50,000.

The state also used college readiness programs to boost the education level of its native population, considered the most reliable group of residents for staying in the state after graduation. Broader education, coupled with a doubling over the past 20 years in the percentage of young professionals born abroad, has meant that the young talent pool is holding strong even as the population of young people shrinks.

With an estimated 46 percent of 25- to 39-year-olds having a bachelor's or higher degree, up 11 percent since 1990, Massachusetts leads the nation in the portion of its population who are young professionals, according to the Fed discussion paper. By comparison, the U.S. rate of young adults age 25 to 39 with a college degree was 30.2 percent in 2007, up just 6.3 percent from 1990.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute senior Audra G. Sosny represents the kind of young talent policy makers spent the decade worrying would flee the state, accepting top-paying jobs elsewhere. She grew up in Worcester but plans to stay in Central Massachusetts for the foreseeable future — as do all her friends, she said.

Though she hasn't yet graduated, Ms. Sosny's lengthy résumé offers her a privilege some people work for their whole career — instead of looking for work, she has employers contacting her.

An industrial engineering major, Ms. Sosny landed an internship by her junior year with Bedford-based iRobot Corp., working on the development of an advanced bomb-defusing prototype. The summer internship stemmed from a survey she conducted for a school project.

“It turns out that one of the WPI alumni who was working for iRobot Corp. saw the survey and was interested in the results,” Ms. Sosny said. “So I used that networking opportunity and said, ‘Hey, how about an internship?' ”

As with those elsewhere in the state, Central Massachusetts residents are most likely to stay close to home if they grew up here. A 2005 survey conducted by The Research Bureau of Worcester found that about 40 percent of area college graduates planned to stay in Central Massachusetts after graduation, roughly the same share who lived here in the first place.

Allison Stanwick, who earned her physician assistant's degree from the Worcester campus of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in December, said she hopes to find work in the state because of the sense of community here.

“It's more because my family and my friends are here,” said Ms. Stanwick, an Auburn native. “This is where I've grown up.”

At MCPHS, where many students pursue jobs out of state in places with health worker shortages, retention has nevertheless increased consistently during the past four years, reaching 63 percent of graduates last May on the Worcester and Boston campuses.Though native Bay Staters recently out of college are still more likely to stay in the state than residents from other origins, Massachusetts has also had increasing success convincing skilled foreigners to settle here.

Albulena Bytyqi, an Albanian-born MCPHS student, said she does not know where she will live after she completes her master's in pharmacy program, but compensation and cost of living will determine it.

“If Worcester paid me more than anywhere else, I would stay here first of all to pay off my student loans,” said Mrs. Bytyqi, who is among the fast-growing group of foreign-born young professionals who now account for 23.6 percent of the state's 25- to 39-year-olds with a college degree, up from 10.4 percent in 1990.

Central Massachusetts also appears to be retaining more college graduates than a decade ago, though more information will come to light in the coming months.

In 2005, The Research Bureau released its survey of recent college graduates in the area to gauge their attitudes toward Central Massachusetts as part of a broader talent-retention initiative launched in 2003 by then-Gov. Mitt Romney. The bureau plans another survey this spring.

Based on some of the recommendations in 2005, the Colleges of Worcester Consortium launched its own effort to retain young talent in Central Massachusetts. To raise awareness of local job opportunities, the consortium created an online internship database since accessed by more than 2,000 students.

A more complex task for the consortium has been building an environment in Worcester that graduates would enjoy. According to the 2005 survey, only 31 percent of students surveyed considered the area a desirable place to live.

Nirmit Patel, a pharmacology student at MCPHS in Worcester, said he hasn't found Massachusetts a bad place to live, but the lure of better compensation in states with pharmacist shortages will probably cause him to leave after he completes his degree.

“Right now, the North is really saturated with pharmacy schools,” said Mr. Patel, who came to MCPHS from Edison, N.J. “People are moving to the South to get a job.”

He is a good example of what the Research Bureau found to be true among plenty of area students from all parts of the country: They don't necessarily dislike Central Massachusetts but they would like certain factors such as the cost of living and nightlife to improve, yet the most important deciding factor in keeping them here is always the promise of competitive jobs.

Mark Bilotta, chief executive officer of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium, said the city already offers more than it did five years ago, with a joint bus service operated by the consortium shuttling students during the weekend to the city's revitalized Canal District, a scene of bars, restaurants and clubs that he compared to Boston's Lansdowne Street.

Greater Boston could be a good yardstick for talent retention because Central Massachusetts has so far missed out on many of the gains in young talent that the region inside Route 128 has enjoyed. In fact, of the expected college graduates leaving Central Massachusetts in the 2005 survey, the largest group of them — 22 percent — planned to move within the state to Greater Boston.

Although Ms. Sosny said she loves her hometown and wants to stay in the area, she said she could commute up to an hour to work and would go to Boston if she wanted to do something on the weekend. She said she considers the relatively lower cost of living and centrality to high-paying jobs an asset to Worcester, but its cultural and nightlife scene is still lacking.

“I kind of wish there was more of a downtown,” she said. “In areas such as Main Street, I want to feel safe going there at night.”

Mr. Bilotta conceded that keeping more college graduates close to Worcester will be a challenge, but said he is hopeful that young people are giving the region “a second look.”

“The higher education community in Boston has not been as cohesive as it has in Worcester,” he said. “But then again, Boston is already a destination, while Worcester you come here to go to college. So we've got our work cut out for us.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.